Ramit Sethi and others discuss why families earning $1 million a year still feel broke. Everyone sends kids to the same elite schools and camps, creating invisible pressure nobody admits to feeling. The costs pile up: multiple properties, cars, tuition. High income doesn't fix the trap.
We live in a community where everybody sends to one of 3 schools and everybody sends to one of 3 camps and everybody—
What's the phrase? Keeping up with the— Joneses.
But they're looking at us like we're the Joneses. This is the problem.
It's called pluralistic ignorance. Everyone is in on it, but no one wants to admit it.
I feel like there's no escape from it.
Of course there is.
So we looked at a public school for my son. Yeah.
How could I put him in an environment that he has never been in? That's filled with things that we don't believe in. That's why the decisions are hard. So we keep doing it.
With the Joneses, your understanding of reality is so out of alignment with the numbers. Why? Because there's such an abundance of money, at least seemingly, with a high income. It's like, do we really need to track the price of Pringles? No. Who gives a fuck? But the problem is, it's not just Pringles anymore. It's multiple cars, multiple properties, camps, multiple tuitions, and on and on and on. And it actually has gotten to the point where even at $1 million a year, You actually can't keep up.
